Will the lawsuits never end? Apple manages to entangle itself once again in another lawsuit, this time filed by Klausner Technologies over the iPhone's Visual Voicemail feature. Details in the full article.

Verizon has won a major victory by convincing a United States court that competitor Vonage violated its mobile phone application patents. The judge favored the plaintiff's claim that Vonage is stealing customers from Verizon after it infringed on some intellectual property rights.

A substantial amount was ordered to be paid to the complainant as compensation for damages. More importantly, the judge slapped a permanent injunction on Vonage which bars it from continuing its flagship line of business. A couple of weeks was given to the Vonage management to work on compensatory technical measures and to halt business activities in the disputed area.

IT and mobile sites such as Techdirt criticized the action taken by Verizon, commenting that "it's a pretty silly way to compete by suing your competition out of business in order to reduce customer choice"

 

Those who criticized the move called Vonage's product an "innovation" of the original Verizon technology and should not have been issued a permanent injunction. Well, their patent laws in Japan are similar to that, aren't they? Maybe Vonage can re-establish there.

You might not be overly ecstatic about the supposed "iPod Phone", but curiosity will always get the better of you, so you wait in line for the coming of Apple's mysterious device. Not to burst your iPod Phone bubbles, but you'd be surprised to know how phone-savvy your iPod is already.  Don't worry, that makes the two of us.

Brian of MacMerc.com has a tutorial on how to get phone messages on your iPod. So, how do you turn your iPod into a phone message hound? Well, you'll need an iPod with iTunes on a Mac, and a phone service that supports message-to-email, such as Vonage or Gizmo Project.

Step 1: Build a Scripted Message Folder

After you've set-up your phone messages to go to your inbox as attachments, you'd have to write an AppleScript (use Script Editor) and attach it to a folder where you'll save your messages. Don't worry, it's just a simple script, like this one:

Take it from here, Brian: Hit compile and save this as a script in your /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/ folder. Create a Messages playlist in iTunes (be sure this playlist is set to sync with your iPod) and a folder just for messages anywhere on your drive. The above script will try to add anything that falls into that folder to iTunes, so make a folder you won't be tempted to use for anything else.

Now, right-click the folder and select Enable Folder Actions, then Configure Folder Actions. Hit the plus on the left side and browse to your folder. Then hit the plus on the right side and select your script. Now we're ready to test.

Step 2: Download your Message Straight to your Pod

Here comes the best part. To test if what you've configured in Step 1 is actually working, call yourself and leave a message. Once the message comes in, right click and save the file to your scripted folder. If all went well, iTunes will fire up and you will find your message on your playlist (and iPod after the next sync). Great job!

Now, listening to your messages is just a sync away!